The economics of health care has changed dramatically of the last 10 to 15 years. Doctors are looking for more sophisticated and efficient ways to edit, manage, and store digital medical media as well as additional revenue sources to supplement the fees earned on providing healthcare services. In addition, healthcare providers are looking for ways to distinguish themselves from their competitors. As an example, there are approximately 60,000 Obstetricians in the United States. Many of them are looking for a competitive edge.
Additionally, medical practitioners are increasingly utilizing medical digital video and image capture in the course of providing their healthcare services. Some of the problems that arise are inefficiencies in the sharing and distribution of this information. Furthermore, the tools for collaboration are rudimentary at best. There is a need to facilitate enhanced sharing, collaboration and training opportunities among doctors and other medical practitioners in both practice and training or educational environments.
With the creation of a new generation of medical digital video and image capture technologies utilized for both diagnostic imaging and procedural documentation purposes, there is a need for a new tool to facilitate transmission, online editing, storage and retrieval, collaboration and sharing of this digital medical video and image data to create new efficiencies. For example, the new ultrasound machines can produce high-resolution three and four dimensional digital videos and images of the fetus and provide their patients with a unique prenatal view of their baby. The current practice is to give the patients a hard copy of the video and/or still images taken from the exam that the patients proudly share among family and friends. This practice necessitates an interruption to the workflow within the practice to burn a DVD or CD or provide a VHS tape to the patient and presents the video and/or images in an unedited, non-personalized, medical format only.